One byproduct of baseball’s changing free-agent market is that older players — guys past the ripe age of 30 — have a harder time finding work. Some get squeezed out of the game altogether, and the ones who stick around are increasingly doing so with minor league contracts.

For players with a lot of experience and a good track record, that can be tough on a few different levels. It’s humbling, they can lose a sense of place, and it means returning to the minor leagues after years in the majors.

After playing for the Rockies from 2009 to last season, Carlos Gonzalez, 33, opted for free agency last October, and then found a free-agent market that was essentially closed off to guys like him. He’s a three-time All Star, three-time Gold Glove winner, a batting champion in 2010, and a key piece of three Rockies’ postseason teams — and he could not find work.

It took until March 19 — just days before spring training ended — for him to get a minor league contract with the Indians. Gonzalez spent the final days of spring in minor league camp preparing to hit the road to start the season with the Triple-A Columbus Clippers. Outside of brief rehab appearances, he had not played at that level in a decade.

“I didn’t expect the play in the minor leagues,” Gonzalez told Sporting News. “The last time I was in the minor leagues was 2009. You kind of put that in the past (thinking), ‘I won’t be there anymore.’”

That’s the part that can be humbling. No matter how well they’ve done in the past, guys like Gonzalez are left to either be done with baseball, often before they are really ready, or go back to the minors.

“It’s not easy,” outfielder Gerardo Parra, now with the Nationals, told SN. “That’s the process in baseball. For me, this is the first year that happened.”

Parra, 32, spent most of his career with the Diamondbacks and Rockies and then, like Gonzalez, opted for free agency late last October. He signed a lot earlier than his former teammate, landing a minor league contract with the Giants in February, right at the start of spring training. He made the Giants’ Opening Day roster and then spent a little over a month with the team before they designated him for assignment in early May. Parra chose free agency instead, and the Nationals picked him up May 9.

For players like Gonzalez and Parra, a return to the minors, even for a short time, can be a culture shock. The lifestyle differences between the majors and even Triple-A can be profound. There’s no chartered private jet for the team; instead players are sandwiched in a middle seat on an early morning flight or riding an overnight sleeper bus. There’s no five-star hotel with a room to themselves; instead players share rooms in mid-level hotels unless they’re willing to pay out of pocket to stay in their own room.

There’s no varied and healthy pre- or post-game food spread in the clubhouse; instead players get sandwiches before a game and then sodium-heavy Chinese food or pasta afterward. They have to go back to waiting through security instead of walking onto a team jet. They get to hotels early in the morning after driving all night or flying out at the crack of dawn and then have to wait around the hotel lobby for three or four hours for their room to be ready, only to be left with enough time to throw their bags in their rooms and head for the ballpark.

“It is the most stark, drastic, intense difference between levels,” Iowa Cubs play-by-play announcer Alex Cohen told SN. “You can completely understand why players are bitter and upset and angry when they go from the big leagues to Triple-A.”

Most of the time, Cohen said, the players are good about keeping those frustrations beneath the surface. They channel it and focus on getting back to the majors, but there’s no pretending that the distance between where they are and where they used to be isn’t vast.

“How can I be so close and still feel so far away?” Cohen said, describing what he’s seen players experience. “You go through the 12 stages of grief. You know, you’re in denial, you’re angry, you’re upset. You finish that, you're focused.”

Parra said that it was tough to go back to feeling like he was fighting for a spot, but that for him a positive attitude helped.

“You can’t put nothing negative in your mind,” he said. “It’s nothing we can change, nothing we can do, just want to play hard every day and do our best every day.”

Learning a new organization, top to bottom, was hard on Gonzalez. It was like starting at a new job or a new school, he said, and he had to do it all over again after the Indians released him May 26 and he signed with the Cubs on a minor league deal June 1 — two new organizations in a matter of a few months after 10 years with the Rockies.

“Going to a new place, it’s a weird thing,” Gonzalez said.

One of the hardest parts of changing teams after a decade with the Rockies was explaining it to his son Santiago and twin daughters, Carlota and Genova. His daughters were born in Denver and knew nothing but seeing their dad in purple pinstripes, so sitting them down this spring to tell them he would be playing for Cleveland was strange for them.

“It’s kind of a little overwhelming for the kids,” Gonzalez said. “All they know is Rockies since they were born. Now you have to explain, ‘Oh, we’re going to be in Cleveland. This is our new team. Daddy plays here.’ And then a month later, ‘Daddy doesn’t play for the Indians anymore, you’re going to be rooting for the Cubs.’”

Gonzalez especially felt the strain of signing late with a minor league contract because it meant he missed spring training, something he said has made him feel like he’s still playing catch-up with everyone else because he didn’t have time to prepare for the season like he normally would. Because he has been in the majors for so long, there are no options for him to simply be sent to the minors anymore. In order to stay in baseball, he had to sign a minor league deal.

“It’s just the way the market was,” Gonzalez said. “It was difficult because missing spring training is something I don’t wish on any player. Every player, everybody should prepare the same way each and every year.”

He hit .210 with a .558 OPS with the Indians before they let him go, and Gonzalez has done only a little bit better with the Cubs, batting only .200 but with a .668 OPS. Even in his last two seasons with the Rockies as his production started to drop, Gonzalez was still a significantly better hitter.

“I know I don’t feel like it was enough to prepare to play in the big leagues,” Gonzalez said of the time he spent with Cleveland’s Triple-A team at the beginning of the season. “As a player, you try to catch up, you try to work every day. That’s what I’ve been doing since the beginning of the year. I’m trying to catch up.”

Players like Parra and Gonzalez are successful because they can adapt and adjust as the game changes. They adjust when the politics around baseball change too, even when that means the unexpected, like signing a minor league contract.

“As a professional player, you have to make new adjustments, and you have to get used to the challenges,” Gonzalez said. “It’s something difficult as a player, but it’s something I guess I have to live and grind for.”